Year-end wrap-up: Each of the last few years to wrap up the year I have picked a theme for my reviews for December. This year due to the overwhelming number of CD’s that deserve exposure, recognition and commentary I am going to resort to quantity over quality. I usually try to give as much attention to each CD with extensive commentary however this month’s reviews (perhaps unfortunately) will be short and sweet and much more in the style of traditional magazine reviews where space restrictions are an important factor. (ie. Less detail) I apologize in advance to readers who expect much more detailed reviews. Please check the reviews archives as many of my colleagues have written excellent detailed commentary of many of these CD’s. I hope the large number of quick comments will help guide you making some of those important year-end CD purchase decisions. Happy Holidays and see you in January. JP

Destination is another CD in the rather obscure and somewhat confusing ‘Guitar Master’ series from Leviathan. Originally the series was a fan-club/internet/ label sort of thing but a few of the eight or so original titles have been re-issued, remixed and re-packaged and this is one of them. Overall, the concept is supremely cool. A bunch of guitar heroes each play music over the same backing bass and drum tracks and release a CD. I can’t compare to the others in the series (Chastain, Stump, Frankenshred, Harris etc) but I do know I really enjoy King’s previous work in Vainglory. Simple packaging for these eight instrumentals but the nice added bonus of liner notes from Mr. King. Musically it is a guitar players dream. The title track is actually a very atypical (for him) longer blues-based track which gives him a chance to stretch his creative wings. The rest is generally shred type stuff, which I love. I’m not a guitar player so there is probably a lot more subtlety than I can verbalize but I know what I like and my first intro to the ‘Guitar Master’ series is a winner.